What People Buy & How To Get Them To Buy It From You!

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Ranked #290 in Squidoo Tips, #47,314 overall

What Are Folks Buying On Squidoo?

PayDay came and went as usual and I was curious today, am I listing the correct items for sale on my lenses? Do people actually buy the stuff I list? What sells? What doesn't? How can I list things that folks actually want to buy? Well, Squidoo keeps track of what I've sold off my lenses, via Amazon and eBay, but I'm the only one who gets to see that and somebody asked me "What sells?". My answer: I list things on my lenses that I myself would buy or have already bought and recommend other buy. I absolutely refuse to list any items that I would not use myself, a side effect of being a door-to-door salesman for 7 years, I suppose.

Well, it stuck me that I'd like to know, what sells best of all and try to figure out why it sells and how I can better promote it, so I can sell more of them off my lenses. So, from now on, I'm going to keep track of what people buy off of my lenses and I'm going to do that here on this lens.

If you have a lens of your own, like this that tracks sales on your Squidoo lenses, let me know. Just leave a link to it in the comment box at the bottom of this lens, and I'll add it here on a featured lens module. Thanks!

~EK

NOTE: Construction of this lens started noon of July 14, 2008 and is on going.

Record Keeping:

My Sales on Squidoo
&
How I Got Them

Where Does The Money Come From? 

In reading through my stats, I find that I get a lot of sales, over and over again off of certain lenses, while the rest are just hit and miss, if they get any sales at all. I'm interested in knowing why this happens. What is it about one lens hat makes people buy from it so often, while on another lens never gets any sales at all?

Of course this train of thought lead to: Do more people buy off Amazon or eBay and which brings in more money for me?

I have a lot of sales off Amazon. A LOT! Oddly, not too much money comes in off Amazon. Their sales pays us about 3.5% as near as I can tell. Amazon items that get sold off my lenses, seem to be low priced books and DVDs under $20. So it takes a lot of sales off Amazon, before they really start adding up. This means I should start listing higher priced items for sale off Amazon or I should do more promotion of the lower priced items so to sell more of them.

I have not yet figured out how much the average % is on eBay sales, I'll do that soon, but whatever it is, I make a lot more on eBay sales than I do on Amazon sales. A LOT MORE. More than double. Does this mean eBay pays more? No. It looks like they pay about the same as Amazon does, near as I can tell. However, on eBay folks are buying bigger ticket items. Often comic books and sewing books and usually at prices of $30 - $50 per item.

Interesting.

My conclusion? People go to Amazon to buy it new and cheeap. People go to eBay to buy it used and high priced. Seems like it should be the other way around, doesn't it? Anyways, that logic tells me that I should be listing a lot of low priced books and DVDs on my Amazon modules and a lot of high bid rare comic books and out of print sewing books on my eBay modules. Savvy?

What Is Online Marketing? 

I suppose that what we lensmasters do here on Squidoo is a form of online marketing, right? Even if the product is not our own, we are marketing it online for others and thus we get a commission for doing so. In a way that means that we Squidoo lensmasters are actually sale representatives for Amazon and eBay! I like the thought of that. Retail sales repping is "my thing". I love doing it. I was a door-to-door sales rep for 7 years, loved it to pieces, quit due to family emergency, but I may take it up again, because I loved that job so much. Since than I got another job temping as a sale associate for a department store. Like my first job, my second one involved pitching sales and getting costumers to buy. All in all I've got 10 years experience pitching sales and I love doing it. I suppose that is one of the reason Squidoo appeals to me so much. I can pitch sales to my hearts content with no boss to tell me what to do, when to do it, and I can pick which items I choose to pitch. Best thing ever for someone who thrives on sales representation!

This time around, though, I'm not sales pitching in person, now I'm sales pitching online, which means I need to know a thing or two about online marketing.

Online marketing is defined on Wikipedia as the selling of products on the Internet. Online marketing, (also known as web marketing, search engine marketing, SEO or internet marketing) is vital in today's internet savvy world, especially for us Squidoo lensmasters. Online marketing employs different techniques than those used in traditional marketing.

In traditional marketing, I smile and great the costumer, ask them their name, tell them my name, find out what they are looking for and than show them what I have to offer and tell them why it is they should by my product. Online marketing is bit different, because for one thing I can't walk up to my costumers, smile and start chatting up a storm with them.

Online marketing requires good copy writing and graphics. Graphics to draw in the costumer and start them reading, copy writing to keep them reading and hopefully convince them to buy the item. It's easier to talk a sale than write a sale.

How To Be a Gold Digger 

A Lesson I Learned From Comic Books

No matter what anyone tells you, a successful and long-lasting online network marketing income is not going to be built around anonymous online marketing. Putting up a website and then expecting people to just sign up and make money for you isn't realistic. Buyers are still people just like you and people don't buy from just anyone, people buy from people and businesses they feel they can trust.

What I learned about marketing I learned from the world's most famous (albeit fictional) gold digger: Scrooge McDuck. Yes, I know, it's me verses the comic books again, but hey, I have a wall of 7,000+ comic books and I read them daily, so I might as well put all that reading to good use right?

Let's look at our dear Uncle Scrooge for a bit. What do we know about him? That he make Bill Gates look like a penniless pauper? Yep. That he owns a piggy bank 3 acres wide by 3 acres tall and it's filled to the top with gold coins, so he can use it as the world's largest money filled swimming pool? Yep. That a long time ago His Majesty McDuck was a penniless begger living on the streets? Yep.

So just how did our fiction money loving duck go from pauper to quadrillionaire? He became a gold digger. He moved to Alaska and discovered the biggest gold strike in history, than took all that gold back with him to Calisota (California) and started investing in various businesses. Scrooge never wasted anything and took advantage of every single opportunity to come his way, and in 30 years built up McDuck Enterprises.

Now granted we are dealing with a fiction character and some pretty overblown proportions, but still, Scrooge himself was based on the combination of a few real life millionaires famous in the 1940's for having survived against all odds and jumping in leaps and bounds over the Great Depression. What this all means to you the Squidoo lensmaster is that you need to use Squidoo to do a little gold digging of your own. Become a prospector in search of internet gold.

Internet prospecting is a tool that enables you to identify people who have an interest in your business or in this case, in buying products off of your Squidoo lenses. Internet prospecting is online marketing. It is up to you to seek out your costumers. Become a prospector always in search of that golden opportunity to "sell" your Squidoo lenses. Find ways to tell everyone you meet both online and offline about your Squidoo lenses, but most of all, target people: find the ones that are going to want to buy stuff off of your lenses. If possible personally contact these people and find out how you can help them. You have to be willing to pick up the phone, type up the emails, post on the forums, write on your blog, send messages on your MySpace, and just do what it takes to get out there and actually talk to people. As I said before your readers are your costumers and your costumers are people just like you. They want to buy their products from real people, so get out there and let people know who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how you can help them to better do the things that they want to do.

Remember too, that if you have to "sell" the product to someone, they won't likely pursue it for long. You don't want that. You want to find the people that are already interested in the product. You want the costumer who is "thinking" about buying but needs that one last bit of reassurance that they are doing the right thing. You are their reassurance! You are the one who is going to be there for them and say "I bought this and it did this for me! I love it!" They well see how great this item worked out for you and that well be enough to push them over the edge and make them buy it off your lens.

Become a gold digger, prospecting the internet in search of those people who want to buy the product but needed to hear from you why they should go ahead and buy it. Prospectors are the best sales reps there are, because they don't just sell the product, they go out of their way to help the customer.

My Favorite Non-Fiction Book: 

This kid started his own business at age 12. By age 15 he was a millionaire. By age 21 he was a billionaire. This is the story behind what he did:
You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way-- and Live the Life You Want-- with the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship

You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way-- and Live the Life You Want-- with the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship

by: Cameron Johnson

Amazon Price: $9.36 (as of 12/04/2009)Buy Now
List Price: $13.00
Used Price: $0.01

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don't have to live that way. We've entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company. As Johnson's remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do -- and it offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut instincts and going for what you really want.

Release Date: 12/31/1969

Avg. Customer Rating: Amazon Rating

Usually ships in 24 hours

The Power of Niche Marketing 

I believe on going very niche. That's what works for me. It's my niche topic lenses that get the highest sales. Oddly, it's my lower ranks lenses that make the most money from customer sales too. They get maybe 10 visits per week, but those visits mean more because they are people who are looking for a specific topic and they usually end up buying a book or DVD about that topic off of my lens, usually via the Amazon Spotlight module (which I find to be the most profitable module for me at least). I have tried my own Amazon links, but for some reason those have not made a single sale, while the Amazon Spotlight Module, has mad hundreds of sales (and hundreds of $$$ in sales). So I stick with that one.

The other thing I have found is that if I love it enough to have bought it myself, I'm very likely to devote an entire lens to it, where I not only review the item, but I talk about what I do with it and how I use it and than I find a niche topic forum and find other people who love it, and we all get together and talk about it, and than eventually they end up on my lens to buy it. What this means is, if you really have a passion for something, than you MUST make a lens about it, because that is the best way to niche things and than get sales.

So, Go niche. Narrow your topic down, and than narrow it down again, and if you can keep going narrower, than doing it, because the more focused your lens topic, than the more focused the Google searches leading to if will be, and the more focused the reader will be on looking for that one special item, thus, the more likely they are to buy it off your lens.

Remember too, not to be worrying about lensrank, because low traffic that buys, is better than armies of traffic that buy nothing!

Tags: Use Them or Lose Traffic! 

To get people to buy products off of your lens, they must first be hooked by your content, however the best content in the world sells nothing if people do not first open your page. While there are many ways to get people to come to your lens, your first step should always be adding tags. Squidoo makes it easy for you by letting you add 40 tags or keywords to your lens. What you have to do is determine what the best keywords for your lens is.

Take my Lord Sesshomaru lenses for instance. If I was to just type in his name and leave it at that, they would not get too much traffic from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, MSN, etc. However, I have 40 tag slots and a guy with a whole lot of variations in spelling his name: Sesshy, Sesshie, Sessho, Sessho Maru Sama, Sesshoumaru, Sesshoumaru-sama Lord Fluffy, Fluffy, Fluffy Sama. And those are just the COMMON nicknames, than there are the categories: cartoon characters, anime, manga, comic book, cosplay, youkai, tayoukai, inugami, etc. I actually sat down and wrote up a list of all the possible keywords that could be used on my 14 lenses devoted to this one character, and came up with more than 200 of them. I than spread those tags out across all 14 lenses and than waited a few weeks to go back and check my stats page.

Once I checked my stats page, I was told which keywords were bringing in traffic from search engines and which were not. I was also told which tags I was not using that were also bringing in traffic. Armed with this new information, I revised my list of keywords, making notes of which were being used the most often, and than changed my tags on these lenses to contain the more popular ones.

What good did doing all of this do me? Well for one thing, by getting rid of tags that were not bringing in traffic and replacing them with ones that were bringing in traffic, I ended up with even more traffic and of course with more traffic came more sales.

The important thing here is that your tags are RELEVANT to your topic. Keywords that work for one topic will not work for another topic! Every topic is different and every lens about each topic is different. One person's lens about dogs may do well with tags such as Cocker Spaniel, puppy, and potty training, while these same tags may bear no relevance at all to a second person's lens about dogs. Do not just jump in and start randomly throwing in any old tag that comes to mind! Every single tag is of great importance.

If you desire to sell certain objects off your lens, be certain to list those objects in your tags as well! People looking to buy something are going to search for the exact words of the item they want to buy. If you are selling that item off your lens, than make sure it's listed in your tags as well, because that's the #1 best way to get potential buyers to your lens.

I have also noticed something very strange, but my lenses with 40 tags get LESS traffic than my lenses with 20 to 30 tags. I'm guessing it almost looks like Google *punishes* too many tags. It's just a guess, but that's what it looks like to me at least. I'm going to try testing this and see what happens.

 

More thoughts on tags.

It should be noted however that relying on tags only to bring in traffic is not going to do much for your traffic. Why? Because tag pages are not indexed by search engines. Why? Because Squidoo blocks search engines from spidering the tags pages. Why? I actually have no idea.

How exactly my lenses are getting traffic via tags, I'm not certain of either, all I know for sure is that when I have bad/off-topic tags my traffic is a lot less than when I have good/on-topic tags.

Every few weeks I try to change my tags until I have what I feel are the best most relevant tags possible.

Also, I avoid using run on tags because no one searchesforstufflikethat. I mean really, how many times have YOU searched using run on words?

I rarely get traffic via Google on my lenses, so I don't worry too much about trying to attract Google attention with my tags. I do notice that the tags seem to be drawing in traffic from the little guy search engines, like DogPile. In fact I get a lot of traffic from DogPile, and the better my tags are, the better my traffic from DogPile. No idea why this is, it just is.

Another important thing to remember about tags is that tags do not have to be in your tag boxes!

Tags or keywords should be sprinkled all throughout your lens. My top lenses are *Publishing Methods* and *Lord Sesshomaru Costume*. Did you notice how the titles of each of these two lenses are doing double duty? Not only do they tell you in 3 words or less what the lens is about, but they also tell Google, and Google is more likely to look for tags in your title than in your tag box! Which explains how these two lenses are still getting traffic from Goggle in spite of the *Google Slap* on Squidoo.

Than there is the subtitles. On my Lord Sesshomaru Costume, the sub title reads:

    Lord Sesshomaru Costume: How To Make One or How I Made Mine and Ideas For How To Make Yours


Long yes, but also keyword rich and "tagged".

To farther explain the use of tags in content, try reading what I wrote on that lens. Okay, so it's the size of a short novel, it'll take you a few days to read, but for starters, just look at the module titles. Pay close attention to Lord Sesshomaru's name in each module. Notice what it is that I did. Did you see it? No? Look again. I changed the spelling of his name in EVERY SINGLE title heading! Is that a spelling error? No! His name really is spelt that way, every version of the way I spelt it is spelt correctly, as his name is spelt in various ways depending on who, what, why, and where, and I took full advantage of that. In other words, each title heading in the module boxes is being used to tag my lens, with a different though relevant keyword tag.

Okay, now scan the text itself, can you count how many times I used his name throughout the written text? More than 100 times! And instead of using the pronouns *he* or *him*, I replaced them with *Sesshomaru* instead. When it comes to tagging content, I'm a tagging queen and that fact that this lens is #1 on Google's page 1 for more than 13 different keywords proves it.

An important note here: Most lenses are not even a fraction the size of my Lord Sesshomaru Costume lens; one module on that lens is the average size of the average lens; this lens is HUGE. Using his name 100 times on this lens is not out of proportion to the amount of text on the lens. Keep that in mind. A much smaller lens would rarely need the keyword used more than 10 times. In other words, don't add keywords for the sake of adding keywords. Too many keywords can do more harm than good and can result in Google dropping your lens due to it looking like spam.

So remember, use tags as much as you can, (without going overboard) and think outside the box (tag box) when using tags and make certain that your tags are used in your text, where they will do the most good.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EDIT:

ADDED SEPTEMBER 6, 2008:

While zipping around Squidutils today, I found this blog post, which I found to be a very interesting read.

I actually noticed I get better traffic when I have 25 to 30 tags, rather than all 40 tags, so I having been going back and deleting tags off of my lenses to test that theory. Reading this, seems like my theory was correct.

I thought everyone on Squidoo should read it, so here it is:


* Followed by other lensmaster responses to this:
Squidoo Tag Pages Have No SEO Benefit! | Squidoo Tools and Lensmaster Tips
Personal blog of thefluffenutter.

If you thought tagging was good for search engine traffic, you'd be wrong! For a long time, it has been common wisdom that adding tags to your lens would...

Religion and Spirituality lenses (and more) l Tag & Search Pages not indexed by google - implications
Personal blog of Christo Rufinus.

We found out recently that tag pages and search pages in squidoo don't get indexed by google. So far most squidoo blogs have focused on what that means for specific squidoo pages, the kind we humans make%u2026

Learn More About SEO for Your Lenses 

Shortly after finding that blog post, I found this lens and knew I had to feature it here. Check it out:
featured lens SEO for squidoo - getting found in google: search engine optimization

SEO - search engine optimization - has many different facets. This lens goes over the main ones - especially how they effect making successful lenses on squidoo. An elaborate version of this lens, with details about blogging, twitter and more, can...

I Get My SEO Info From This Site: 

SEOmoz | Google Search Engine Ranking Factors
A full list of algorithmic pieces influencing search engine rankings at Google, as voted on by 35 experts in the search marketing world.

What KeyWords Should You Use? 

Keywords (or tags) are very important to your lens, because unless you do some super heavy promotion of your lenses, more than 90% of your traffic is going to find your lens based on the tags you used on it.

As I mentioned above, it is important for you to think about your topic and make a list of as many keywords (and short phrases of 5 words or less) as possible. Try to come up with words and phrases that you believe your potential readers are going to type into Google.

Think outside your lens as well. What are "sister topics" of you lens topic, that people might search for? Include those as well.

It is also important to include "high searched for" tags, that will match your topic. For example, both eBay and Amazon.com are among the top 25 most search for keywords every single day! Well if you are listing items from each, than it really can't hurt you to add those two words to your tag list as well.

For those asking how to find out what the most searched for keywords are, I know how to find out and I'll tell you my secret to using keywords that bring in a lot of traffic! It's this site right here, updated every 48 hours, it lists the top 500 word searched for on Google:


FREE Keywords for Google AdWords, Yahoo!/Overture, MSN Keywords, Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings, etc.
Keywords offers the top 500 searched internet keyword rankings compiled from a database of over 350 million search terms extracted from popular metacrawlers, including Metacrawler and Dogpile search.

What Sells & How Are You Displaying Those Items On Your Lenses? 

If you have been tracking my costume making lenses than you know that I am sewing a very elaborate "hollywood movie" style costume. What you may not know, however, is that I'm paying for the materials, with nothing but the Squidoo income coming in from the lenses about that costume! Yes, my costume is being made not from all 300+ of my lenses, but just 100% from the income being brought in on the sales off of my sewing and costume lenses, which as of this writing totals over $400 in income since March of 2008, from sales off those 26 lenses alone, and most of that coming from sales of Lord Sesshomaru action figures, anime cells, manga back issues... and oooh... shame on me for listing them but SesshoRin loli sells for $50 to $400 per issue! (see picture of one that sold off eBay --->) Hey, I talk about my favorite fictional guy like crazy and he pays for himself, I love it!

I know, there are other lensmasters out there who preach against lots and lots of Amazon and eBay modules, but, well, if they are bringing in money for me, than I'm going to keep right on using them. How many of each I put on each lens, depends on the topic, the way I planned the lens, and how popular the topic is.

Say, if it's a movie review lens, than there are just so many ads you can place for the same DVD. In that case you'd see one Amazon module featuring the DVD new and one eBay module featuring the same DVD used.

Looking at my Sessho lenses again, here you have a character with DVDs, comic books, action figures, calenders, costumes, posters, bed spreads, t-shirts, trading cards, wrapping paper, birthday cards, pencil toppers, key chains, beanie babies, staionary, animation cells, and a whole slew of other official promo items, not including the uber-rare ultra collectible black market items such as original one of a kind fan art paintings and hand drawn/written fanzines. In the case of a topic like this, You will see 10, 20, or even 30 eBay modules on a single lens, with each one set to search for a different item. "Sesshomaru dvd" on one, "Sesshomaru manga" on the next, etc, all the way down the list until I can't think of any more items for eBay to search for.

So is it better to have lots of sales modules or just one or two on each lens? It really depends on the lens in question. For lenses focusing on show caseing collectibles, than lots and lots of sales modules is the way to go. For lenses focusing on how-to instructions, than only one or two modules directing the reader to the best item that will help them, is the way to go.

I think a mix of each works best. In other words, create some lenses that focus on selling and create some lenses that focus on information. Both will bring in sales for you.

Shown in the links below are my lenses on which the most items are purchased from (in other words these are the lenses of mine that are bringing in the most money from Amazon and eBay module sales). On each of these lenses I have both Amazon and eBay modules, and have had sales from each on each lens, with one sale on eBay being over $250 for one item!

My Top Money Makers: 

featured lens Publishing Methods

How should you publish your book? Self-Publishing? Vanity Press? Traditional? POD-People? The Big Five? What's the difference? On this lens I explore the different options you have as a writer to get your book published.

featured lens How to Start a Publishing Company

How to start a publishing company: I started my own small press publishing company. Here on this lens you will find out what I did and how you can do it too.

featured lens Kimono Embroidery

I love embroidery and have been embroidering on a professional (non-career) level for more than 20 years. Embroidery is probably my most done hobby. I embroidery everything I touch. I'm currently undergoing a massive embroidery project, which involve...

featured lens Ten Best Vincent Price Films

This lens is devoted to reviewing what I consider to be the ten best Vincent Price movies ever made. Ten movies; Twenty hours of great movie viewing. Why not gather together your friends and family and host your own Vincent Price Movie Marathon! A gr...

featured lens Creating Character Profiles

A character is a person about whom you write. Every work of fiction (book, screenplay, SCA persona, RPG, LARP, MMORPG, video game, etc.) has characters in it. Question is, do you as a writer, really know as much as you should about your characters? T...

 

featured lens Sewing With Silk

NOTE: This lens is still under construction! Please come back later. Thank You! I love silk. Silk is a soft, buttery smooth fabric that feels like heaven to the touch. It is one of my favorite fabrics. It's also a fabric that can be quite difficult...

featured lens What's On Your Toilet?

Did you ever snoop through someone's guest bathroom and find yourself wondering where they got the fancy desinger toilet seat covers? Well, here is where you can get them for your bathroom too!

featured lens Lord Sesshomaru

Lord Sesshomaru on SquidWho. Villain. Demon. Warrior. Wizard. My fave anime` character. "Leave before I lop off your head." ~ Lord Sesshomaru

featured lens Crazy Quilt Embroidery

Crazy quilting is the type of embroidery I do the most of, so I'm making a lens devoted to it. Right now this lens is a showcase of supplies for the crazy quilter. Eventually I'll get around to writing up stitch instructions and posting images of my...

featured lens Liberace

Wladziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 - February 4, 1987), better known by the stage name Liberace, and known to his friends as Lee, was a charismatic American entertainer. Liberace` was one of the world's greatest entertainers. Find out more abo...

Another Favorite of Mine: 

Both offline and online, I have a nack for customer service. The secret to my customer service success is this book. Read it and learn to give customers what they want:
Give'em the Pickle!

Give'em the Pickle!

by: Bob Farrell, Bill Perkins

Amazon Price: (as of 12/04/2009)Buy Now
List Price: $19.95
Used Price: $8.40

Bob Farrell's customer orientation is the result of a careen in cusumer products and food service. After 12 years in retail grocery sales, he combined his love for family, fun, ice cream and co-founded one of the first national full-serrvice chain restaurants: Farrell's Ice Cream Parlours. After personally managing the opening of more than 150 Farrell's restaurants, he eventually sold the company to Marriott. As a seasoned entrenaur, he invested in various businesses, but always maintained involvement in the restaurant industry. He created Engine House Pizza, a regional chain, and served as chairman of the board for Pacific Coast Restaurants, Inc. He continues to serve as chairman emeritus and consultant to the company. In an undustry where the failure rate exceeds 80%, Bob Farrell succeeds as a reataurateur by keeping a keen eye on the customer, anticipating needs and performing beyond expectations. Such commitments led him to be recognized with t! he Horatio Alger Award and the National Restaurant Association Man of the Year Award. He now shares his story with companies around the world urging them to "Give'em the Pickle and they'll be back."

Release Date: 12/31/1969

Avg. Customer Rating: Amazon Rating

What People Are Buying From Me & Why They Did 

Eventually I hope to have every item I have sold off Squidoo listed here on this lens, however, the table below took 3 hours to create, involving looking up my Squid-stats, creating the html for the table, tracking down the links for each item on Amazon, etc. So, it may be quite a well (months even) before I finally get every single item I have sold off Squidoo, listed here on this lens, but slowly and surly they will eventually show up here, given you a look at what my readers buy when reading my lenses.

I'm not sure yet how I will deal with a table for the eBay items sold off of my lenses, because eBay disables the links to the auctions after 90 days, so I'll have to figure something else out seeing how I won't be able to link to actual products the way I did with the Amazon table.

My Amazon Sales: 

(Partial List.... More to Be Added)

 

.

A Sample of My eBay Sales 

info being written, to be posted shortly


    A Sample of My eBay Sales:

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What About Zazzle? 

I have already written info elsewhere about my sales on Squidoo with Zazzle, but I'll write a bit for this lens as well. You see, while a lot of my Squidoo income is coming in from Google/Glam, Amazon, and eBay (all paid to me through Squidoo payouts), even more of it is coming in from Zazzle (not paid to me by Squidoo). How? Well, I am an artist and paint and draw a lot of art. I load my art to Zazzle, put it on products, than put links to those product here on my lenses. People read my lenses, click the links to my Zazzle items, buy them, and at the end of each month Zazzle sends me a check.

Round Magnet magnetRound Magnet - Customized magnetRound Magnet magnetRound Magnet magnet

For more detailed info on this subject see my other lenses on how I sell my art on Squidoo here:

 

featured lens How To Start Your Own POD Business

I have started two different home businesses and one fund raiser all using the Print On Demand technology. On this lens I well look at what I did and tell you how you can do it too! This lens was created on September 5, 2007 Last updated on August...

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I've been an artist for nearly 30 years now. In the past few years I've expanded to creating art for greeting cards and t-shirts. On this lens I'll look at what I do and how you can do it as well.

What Items Should You "Sell" on Squidoo? 

Should you post the same items on your lenses, that I do on mine? Nope, not unless you have bought those items (or would buy) and can "sell" them to your readers. By only selling items you feel passionate about and than focusing on finding others who are passionate about it with you, you will be able to turn your Squidoo income into an income that you truly love, rather than a ho-hum job you do for money. That is one of the things that is so great about Squidoo. You can sell anything. ANYTHING! Just do a quick search of Amazon or eBay and you having literally millions of products at your fingertips just waiting for you to promote them!

Pick something that you REALLY REALLY love and start talking about why you love it. How did you first find out about it? Tell people! How do you use it? How does it effect your life? Tell people! Tell people everything you can think of to say about it. People love to know what other people do... the popularity of blogs is proof of that fact. Use your Squidoo lenses like a blog, and chat up a storm about things you do, things you use, things you eat, books you read, shows you watch, pets you own.... anything... ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING.... can become a topic for your next Squidoo lens, and no matter what it is, Amazon and eBay have something to sell that goes with the topic of your lens.

Items that people are buying on my lenses are, mostly comic books, manga, anime art, sewing books, and writing books. Why? Because I'm an author and I have a lot of lenses about how to write and those list writing books. I'm a fashion designing costumer who spends every free moment sewing, and thus my lenses and their products reflect on that as well. My world pretty much revolves around comic books, I read comic books, I write comic book scripts, I watch cartoons based on my favorite comic books and I cosplay as my favorite comic book characters, therefore more than half of my 300+ lenses are devoted to my love of comic books in one way, shape, form or another, and thus a huge chunk of my Squidoo income is coming in from the sale of comic book related items.

What this boils down to is, that I write articles about things I do in my daily life and I post those articles on Squidoo and I show people the actual items I used/bought myself, and talked about how much I loved them. What you need to do, is figure out what in your life you are really passionate about and than write Squidoo lenses about it and promote items related to it, wither it be cooking, gardening, auto repair, world travel, yoga, rock climbing, dog grooming, or any other activity you do that you love doing.

What are you selling here? Is it the product it self? No. It's you. You are selling your joy and letting other feel that same joy. When people see how much you love what you do, they want to feel that same joy you felt, and THAT is why they buy something. They want to be as happy as you were about it. They want the same benefits you got. So sell what you love and love what you sell, and others will buy it so that they can feel the love too. Remember: customers are people. Your best customer is the customer who wants to be like you.

 

Hug Your Customers: The Proven Way to Personalize Sales and Achieve Astounding Results

Hug Your Customers: The Proven Way to Personalize Sales and Achieve Astounding Results

by: Jack Mitchell

Amazon Price: $15.96 (as of 12/04/2009)Buy Now
List Price: $19.95
Used Price: $0.84

HUG YOUR CUSTOMERS is about customer service and how Jack Mitchell has practiced it by extending "hugs" - unexpected extras, from knowing each customers name, along with their family members and clothing preferences, to handing out free coffee and newspapers on the Greenwich commuter train platform to say thanks (and by extension "Shop at Mitchells"). Mitchell looks at sales as being about something other than the product. You're not selling clothing, you're selling the relationship. That's why on Saturdays, many people come to Mitchells just to see what's going on. In the summer, he's giving away hot dogs. Any time a regular customer walks in, the sales staff knows his name, spouse's and kids' names, clothing preferences and last purchase.

Release Date: 06/11/2003

Avg. Customer Rating: Amazon Rating

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Reader Poll  

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So How Much Money Do Lensmasters Make & How Much Do You Make From Squidoo? 

Are you asking how much they were paid by Squidoo itself or how much they made total from both Squidoo AND their affiliate links (ClickBank etc)?

There is one lensmaster who makes over $1,000 per month, but very little of that money is paid to him via Squidoo, he said most of it is coming from his Pepperjam and CJ affiliate links.

Last fall (October 2007 ?) , Squidoo sent out an email to the Giant Squids announcing that they broke a record when they paid a single lensmaster a one month payment of $130.

I recall (in March 2008, I think it was) one lensmaster posted on the forums that they had gotten a $400 payment from Squidoo. That's the highest actual payment being paid out directly from Squidoo that I've ever heard of.

On June 4, 2008 Squidoo announced THIS:

    This month we had about 100 Lensmasters make over $100 on Squidoo, now that's a lot of dough!

    Even better over 1,000 people earned between $5 and $99!

    AND, yes there is an AND . . . Squidoo Lensmasters (That's YOU!) Made over $8,000 for charity, now doesn't that make you feel good?.



My own monthly average directly from Squidoo themselves is $64 - $98 per month, however I'm getting another $30 - $200 per month on top of that from Zazzle and $25 -$70 from CafePress.

I sell my art off many of my lenses, and I already had a following of buyers for my art BEFORE I joined Squidoo, so that's something to consider as well.

Also, a lot of my traffic is coming in from my fans, who basically follow me around the internet. (I joined the internet in 1997, so I have quite a trail of fans now just from the 300+ forums I post on). So a lot of my traffic is NOT coming in from search engines but rather from people who read my stuff elsewhere and are looking for more things to read by me. Which is another thing to consider. Getting traffic is not easy, I kind of brought traffic with me when I joined Squidoo, so I don't have to worry to much about finding traffic for my lenses. That is not the case with most lensmasters however. And traffic will certainly effect your income.

My "busy season" is about to start though, so those numbers will double or triple during November - January, due to the fact that 65% of my 378 lenses are heavy in the Halloween theme and NaNoWriMo theme, meaning that while the rest of the year my traffic is sluggish with 20 - 50 visits per week, during October (Halloween) and November (NaNoWriMo) my lenses start getting 100 - 400 visit per lens per week, with my 2 top lenses getting that many visits per day.

However, once December rolls in, my traffic and my income will drop back down all over again. I guess that means I need to plan themed lenses for each month rather than just focusing on Halloween and NaNoWriMo lenses. oh well.

...and on that note, I will leave because it's 5:30 and InuYasha is coming on... Time for my daily dose of *cough*inspiration*cough* so I can come back and write another (26th?) lens about the series. Not even Squidoo can get between me and Sessh.

Reader Feedback 

Thank You Kitty

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I'm looking for some great on-topic lenses to add to my lensroll on this lens and for the featured lens modules. Feel free to leave a link to it in the comment box. Next time I log-in I'll stop by and check it out.

PS: Don't forget to leave a star rating too. (See top of page). Thanks!

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  • Reply
    annetteghallowell annetteghallowell Oct 9, 2008 @ 8:13 am
    I have been here before and I am sure I will be back again...and again...and again! One of my favorite resources.
  • Reply
    CapeMan CapeMan Sep 29, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
    Thanks for sharing all this very interesting info with us! I'm trying to get some income with Zazzle, but need to learn a lot! All the best with your endeavours!
  • Reply
    Lou1842 Lou1842 Sep 23, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
    Thanks for the information. This is really good stuff. I will be reading it again. Thanks.
  • Reply
    Gandree Gandree Sep 9, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
    I can't believe how prolifically verbal you are. You have inspired me to ramp up my output. I haven't made anything from sales yet but I will...
  • Reply
    EelKat EelKat Sep 9, 2008 @ 12:27 pm
    Well, as could be expected, my top selling lenses got hit with another round of one star rates. Such is the fact of those who tell others which of their lenses are doing the best.

    Will I take down my list? No.

    Will the 1 star rates effect my sales? No.

    As, I've said time and again, my traffic is coming from my devoted and loyal followers who've followed me around the net since 1997, and thus giving me 1 star rates will do nothing to stop my traffic or my sales.
  • Reply
    EelKat EelKat Sep 6, 2008 @ 1:09 pm
    @CleanerLife

    get them out of the basement! board 'em and bag 'em and get 'em on bookshelves in your bedroom or living room... and don't be afraid to read them. So many comic book collectors by the book and than lock it away so *it'll be worth something some day*. I shocked one buyer, by buying an old special edition, still sealed in it's original wrapper, and with free gift still sealed inside.... and I OPENED it! Hey, I wanted to read it not hide it away somewhere! LOL!
  • Reply
    CleanerLife CleanerLife Aug 27, 2008 @ 11:53 pm
    Thanks for taking the time to put this lens together, its very inspiring, but I'm most envious of your comic collection! Mine hasn't been added to in a very long time, and is moldering in the basement :'(
  • Reply
    Tiddledeewinks Tiddledeewinks Aug 27, 2008 @ 2:56 am
    Eelkat's Mom here. I'm starting to design more things for my Zazzle store at www.zazzle.com/jeanniec.
  • Reply
    faithcreations faithcreations Aug 26, 2008 @ 5:06 pm
    Nice Lens! Welcome to the "SHOP AT HOME" group! Faith
  • Reply
    icjackson icjackson Aug 25, 2008 @ 4:21 am
    This is awesome stuff...

    I am officially "wowed" - and inspired.

    Thank you for sharing this!
  • Reply
    kiwisoutback kiwisoutback Aug 5, 2008 @ 11:54 am
    This is really cool, I wish there were more lenses like this on Squidoo! I'm going to reread this it's so good!
  • Reply
    annetteghallowell annetteghallowell Aug 1, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
    Thanks for another useful lens! For those of you that are not aware of it....check out EelKat's profile and see the multitudes of other helpful lenses she has written! 5*!
  • Reply
    Jewelsofawe Jewelsofawe Jul 31, 2008 @ 9:58 pm
    Cool and informative lens.
  • Reply
    needfulthings needfulthings Jul 30, 2008 @ 2:01 pm
    thank you soo much for all your wonderful tips. i finally understand where i can go to find products that i can promote.your lens helped me more than you will ever know. i have been trying to figure this out for a month . have a great day. needfulthings
  • Reply
    ArtSiren ArtSiren Jul 30, 2008 @ 8:15 am
    Incredibly informative lens. Thanks! Now I've read it here, I can understand why some of my lenses do well - either it's about ME and my passions, or it's got loads of decent tags - or badly, because I couldn't think of good keywords. 5*
  • Reply
    EelKat EelKat Jul 29, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
    I love the 4hww forum, lots of great advice there; I'm afraid I do more reading than posting over there though! LOL! Glad to see other members here on Squidoo.
  • Reply
    coollikeme coollikeme Jul 29, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
    Thanks for all the tips. I was not even trying to sell Ebay stuff. I thought it was a waste of time, shows you how much I need have to learn. I have read your stuff on 4hww forum, lots of great tips there.
  • Reply
    pkmcr pkmcr Jul 27, 2008 @ 9:45 am
    It's obvious you have put an immense amount of evaluative work into this lens and I shall be keeping a watch on this as it develops.

    Take care

    Paul
  • Reply
    WhippetTalk WhippetTalk Jul 21, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
    wow, wow, wow! You put a lot of work into this lens. There's a lot of comprehensive information here and I'll be watching to see how it progresses. So far, I have not made much in sales off the modules. But I think it's too early to tell. I don't have that many lenses. Great advice here. Thanks for sharing your hard work! 5*s
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by EelKat



I am Wendy C Allen, Doll Maker and Independent Avon Sales Representative.
I love Eels. I love Bobcat. I am a Giant Squid and a Squid Angel.
I am an...

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